EveryCloud is going to Sorrento for the ITT Conference 2017

In June, EveryCloud will be attending the Institute of Travel and Tourism Conference in Sorrento, one of the year’s biggest events for the UK’s tourism and travel industry. There, over three days, we’ll be meeting with industry leaders and learning more about the challenges and opportunities facing the industry in 2017, while spreading the word about the need for strong security and how cloud-based solutions can help. With high-profile speakers from both inside and outside the travel industry, including executives from names as big as Avis, Thomas Cook and the TUI Group (the company behind Thomson, First Choice and TUI Fly) it’s going to be interesting. George Osborne, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, now Evening Standard Editor, will also be speaking at the event.

Of course, we’re not just going for the speakers, or for the beautiful scenery and weather, but because cloud security is so important for the travel industry. It’s a fiercely competitive business and one of the biggest in the UK, with travel and tourism as a whole worth over £120 billion and outbound travel worth £28.3 billion on its own.

As with any retail industry, there’s a need to protect a lot of sensitive personal and financial data, but travel and tourism brings in some quite specific concerns. After all, you’re dealing with a wider range of personal information about travellers plus details of where and how they’re travelling, where they’re staying and who they’re with. That covers not only ordinary people and families going on their holidays but business travellers on corporate trips as well. Security is vital for every industry, but in travel its particularly crucial. Travel isn’t all sunshine, sand and holidays.

At EveryCloud, we always take things further than the standard, one-size-fits-all approach. As an impartial cloud broker, we pull together solutions that are specific to each company we work with and the industry they’re in. We think hard about the best mix of secure web gateway and next-gen firewall services, threat intelligence, Web filtering, identity access and management and cloud security. We run full risk assessments, consider appropriate security measures and guide our clients through every element of the solution. While other cloud security providers might stick to one vendor or build a decent package deal, we work with a range of vendors to get everything absolutely right.

That’s only getting more important next year, once the EU’s General Data Protection regulation comes into force. GDPR is intentionally tough, pushing companies to think harder about data security and giving their customers and users more rights about how their personal information is used and stored. Businesses will need to be more transparent about their data-processing activities and take a more strategic approach. Their customers will have legal rights to view the data held on them, have mistakes corrected and request that it’s not processed or even request its deletion. Simply putting all that in place will be a challenge, and that’s without new regulations that cover children’s data and trans-border data transfers – both issues in the travel business.

GDPR is even more demanding when it comes to data protection. Companies will have additional legal requirements to build adequate security into their systems and processes and demonstrate it through proper documentation, audits and testing. There are new regulations to cover what happens in the event of a security breach, and the penalties for companies that get it wrong go beyond damage to reputation and customer complaints, with penalties for non-compliance that could reach €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher.

For many companies, that all makes GDPR a headache – they simply don’t have the in-house resources or expertise to handle the new regulations, and, frankly, they have other more pressing concerns. Luckily, out team knows GDPR inside and out, and we’ve been working with our cloud security partners to build solutions that can help companies in the travel and tourism industry meet all their GDPR obligations. What’s more, we can take things further, so that GDPR isn’t just a pain point but an opportunity to ease the burden of security on your business and reduce the risks of a damaging breach. Think of us as guides on your GDPR journey, making sure you get the best and stay secure.

If you’d like more, why not meet us for a coffee, either while we’re out at Sorrento or here in the UK. Just visit our bookings page to reserve a meeting.